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CUBA. 



"A righteqjis wrath and just resentment, the swift punishment of the 
assassin and the wrongdoer, are wholly different from revenge, and are 
the safeguards and protection of a nation among nations." 



SPEECH 



HON. WILLIAM A. HARRIS, 



OF KANSAS. 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



Tuesday, April S, 1898. 



WASHINGTON. 

1898. 




68133 



J? SPEECH 

(^ OF 

' y ? HON. WILLIAM A. HAEEIS. 
V 

a** The Senate having under consideration the following resolution : 

Resolved, That the Committee on Foreign Relations of this body be directed 
to report at the earliest practicable moment, and without waiting for the 
concurrence or advice of any department of the Government, what action, 
if any, in view of the loss of the battle ship Maine and the destruction of the 
lives of 266 American sailors, and in view of the well-known deplorable con- 
dition of affairs in the Island of Cuba, is required from the Congress of the 
United States to sustain and vindicate the honor and dignity of this nation, 
and to meet and answer the obligations of humanity imposed on this Gov- 
ernment as the result of the coudition of affairs in said island, and that said 
committee report by bill, resolution, or otherwise, as it may deem most ex- 
pedient; — 

Mr. HARRIS said: 

Mr. President: I have but a few words to say. It is not a 
time for many words. Those things which were a few months 
ago deemed the wild imaginings of sensational journalists have 
been brought home to this Chamber by some of its ablest mem- 
bers straight from the field of enactment — brought in such a 
fashion that the hideous reality has chilled our blood and made 
all previous stories seem flat and tame. The evidence has been 
so overwhelming of cold-blooded cruelty and murder so foul and 
vast that all denial has been hushed, and. even the false and inhu- 
man Government that is responsible is now talking of relief and 
restoration to the miserable remnant of humanity that is about to 
die: not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of 
men, women, and children, tortured, butchered, and starved to 
death at our very threshold, and still we have sniveling, canting 
hypocrites, who send advice to this Senate to hold back and let 
the foul work go on; still we have cold-blooded monsters who 
argue that it is none of our affair and that intervention will be 
trespassing upon the rights, (God save the mark) of a friendly 
power. 

Mr. President, when Cain, with bloody hands, insolently an- 
swered his God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" he formulated the 
doctrine of nonintervention; nor have his followers advanced or 
improved it. These horrors are not new or sudden spasms of 
ferocity; for four hundred years the flag of Spain has covered no 
other policy. From the time her steel-clad soldiers appeared among 
the naked nations of this New World they have been butchers and 
robbers. Half the world was theirs; but humanity could not 
endure the galling yoke, and heedless of death, seeking it gladly 
as a welcome release, her tortured subjects have risen and over- 
thrown the oppressors. 

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In the beautiful Island of Cuba for a generation there has been 
no peace. Revolt after revolt has occurred, stamped out with 
unspeakable cruelty at times, and at times, force failing, cajoled 
and lulled by false promises. Now, after years of struggle, lack- 
ing courage and skill to conquer, the Spaniard has planned and 
carried on the destruction by starvation of a whole race. If blood 
and tears and death are the price of liberty, the Cubans have 
earned it, and more dearly than any nation of earth. 

But, Mr. President, it might seem possible to some men that 
this hell might be ignored, might be passed by on the other side, 
though in our very path, and we might, like Bismarck, declare 
that the lives of the whole Balkan race were not worth the bones 
of a single American sailor; but there came to us " la noche triste," 
of February 15, 1898, not saddened because of the loss of a few 
mailed robbers set upon by naked savages, and, tired out by butch- 
ery, falling victims to an outraged people, but because a gallant 
ship and a gallant crew went down to death by treachery— official 
treachery, at which the whole world revolts. Our ' ; noche triste " 
came upon us. forever to be the night most sorrowful and black, 
most crammed with horror in all our years, in all the years which 
time shall give us. Sir, since that night, when the foul water of 
Havana closed over the Maine and her crew, the heart of the na- 
tion has been beating a funeral march, muffled and low, while 
waiting the verdict, and it seemed an age. 

.No race on earth ever exhibited such stern, sad self-control; 
but, oh, men in high places here, and beyond the seas, do not de- 
lude and shame yourselves with the thought that this, the black- 
est crime of all the ages, will be a mere "incident;" that this, the 
foulest insult that the world has blushed for, will be arbitrated; 
that this hideous specter will ever be laid by the diplomatic wiles 
of a nation that forever lets " the false face hide what the false 
heart doth know;" and to-day, Mr. President, all over this land 
there is the cry "Why do you wait?" and the flag snarls and 
flouts the wind, impatient. 
Oh, God, it can not be that we forget! that we forget! 
Sir, I have seen war. If to die were to reach the summit of 
human calamity, if to weep and mourn for the loved and lost were 
to make up the sum of human woe, then nothing would be worse 
than war. But, sir, there is a crucifixion of the soul when honor 
dies; there is a death of a nation "when the jingle of the guinea 
heals the hurt that honor feels; " there is an existence, when patri- 
otic pride is dead, "that doth murder sleep" and life becomes a 
horrid nightmare, and men shun their fellows, and the laugh of 
little children becomes a taunt and a mockery. True, there have 
been men who could ex\st and thrive and fatten without national 
honor or pride or patriotism, like worms in a muck heap, but 
that nation has been the scorned of all time and has quickly died. 
God forbid that any such should ever be called Americans. 

Sir, I shall never consent that our dead shall lie in Spanish soil 
and under the Spanish flag. Brave American sailors can know 
no rest there. When it becomes consecrated by freedom, when 
that flag has trailed in the dust, when the Cuban Republic is 
raised as a monument to the men who went down in the Maine, 
then, and then onlv, will they sleep. 

Do you say this is revenge, and that revenge is unworthy of a 
great nation? No. Mr. President, a righteous wrath and just re- 
sentment, the swift punishment of the assassin and the wrongdoer, 
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are wholly different from revenge, and are the safeguards and 
protection of a nation among nations, and enable us' to look the 
whole world in the face. What sight more glorious than a nation 
roused in such a cause as this! 

God hates a coward, and a nation timid, halting, and hesitat- 
ing in its foreign policy is a sight despised of G-od arid man. A 
just war promotes and preserves all that is highest and best in 
national life. 

Christ bought the keys of Paradise 
By cruel bleeding. 



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